What many of us wondered the moment Research In Motion announced the PlayBook's QNX-based operating system has now transpired: the Canadian smartphone and tablet company has announced BBX, their QNX-based operating system for both smartphones and tablets - in other words, the expansion of the PlayBook operating system into smartphones.

I think you're exaggerating things just a bit, no? The PlayBook was half-baked, it's true, but they are remedying that with new E-mail, Calendar, etc. clients and now it's shaping up to be quite a nice device. As for the multitude of form factors, I don't hear anyone complaining about other manufacturers doing this. You are basically asking them to become Apple, with "one model" is that it? This is just blind to the fact that BlackBerry in particular is popular *precisely because* of the form factors they offer (god knows it's not the modernity of the OS).

As for OS 7, they've already said it's the last version. From here on out all development efforts are going towards BBX.

As for consumer/business, the whole industry is moving towards the idea of "one device". Nothing wrong with following the trend.

As for the runtimes, keep in mind that the effort needed for the Android and AIR runtimes is basically nothing, because neither one is developed in-house. AIR was important because it was there from the get-go as a stop-gap solution that let them come to market with the PlayBook more rapidly than anyone thought possible. In terms of actual in-house development, it's WebWorks and Native--and if you watch the presentation, you'll see that they are really starting to emphasize those two and deemphasize everything else.

Keep in mind that Android also has 4 runtimes, if you count Adobe AIR and Google Web Toolkit.

Really, I don't see how throwing out the board and CEO is going to help things. Haven't we learned anything from the similar actions that recently took place at Nokia and HP? Mike Lazaridis lacks charisma, true, but he still seems to be the heart and soul of the company--take him away and the ship will sink much quicker, I guarantee it.

It actually seems clearer than ever to me that they know what they're doing for once, and the last thing they need is some boardroom politics to #&$@ everything up, like what happened to Nokia and HP.